One Giant Leap for mankind-A Backward leap that is

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past one month, you would have heard by now that today is the the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing by a human. NASA is celebrating it on a huge scale, and the media is trying to make all of us a part of it, which is actually great since it tells the newer generations a lot about how difficult it is actually to get into space and onto moon, how many sacrifices that man had to make to take that small step. And it also tells us that going into space is not actually as easy as what we see in say Star Trek, and we are a very very long way from making space travel that easier and accessible to everyone.
There are many reasons, why I call this has been a backward leap---

• That sense of accomplishment on that day, when Armstrong set foot on moon has been a very bad obstacle for future space exploration. American leaders did not have the vision to see it as an achievement for mankind, but rather as an upper hand in the duel with the Soviets. So after they proved to be superior by landing a man on moon, instead of taking the next logical step, which would be taking man to Mars, or any other planet, they cut back the funds to NASA, and let it be satisfied with peanut funded programs like International Space station. After all, moon is just a satellite of the planet called earth, and for mankind to survive for eternity, we have to find new planets, not moons that we can colonise. Atleast, until we find life on some extra-galatical planets, which are more advanced than us, and whose inhabitants will eventually make us their slaves. This year, instead of celebrating the 40th year and being happy with that, we(Atleast the Americans) have to start thinking about landing on Mars, and going further. Though given, the recession, and other problems, it could be very difficult to start such ambitious projects this or the next year.

• But what irks me really, among all this is what they did during the Apollo 8-which is the first mission that went out of earth orbit and orbited the moon, giving us this first picture of 'Earthrise'. I will quote from NASA's site about what they did "For the next 20 hours, the astronauts circled the Moon, which appeared out their windows as a gray, battered wasteland. They took photographs, scouted future landing sites, and on Christmas Eve read from the Book of Genesis to TV viewers back on Earth"---It was a bit of a shock even after 40 years, instead of realizing that we live on a small planet on this cosmic void, and we are alone, and there is no one to look after us but ourselves, all they could think of was to read from the Book of Genesis. Very recently Indians did something similar, when they launched their own Moon mission. They took the probe, they were about to launch around the country to all major temples, and mosques and churches, to get blessings for the probe. That Gods did not look after the probe and the probe got lost is another matter. I mean, the naivety or gullibility of man astonishes me and saddens me immensely.